Transcript

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>> Facebook is cutting the price of its Oculus virtual reality unit, hoping to drive sales and catch up in this three-person race. I'm David Ingram, tech reporter for Reuters in San Francisco. On Monday, Oculus, the virtual reality unit owned by Facebook, cut the price of its marquee headset and handheld devices by $200 down to $400.

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It's a temporary sale that's gonna last for six weeks. Now Oculus is competing with Sony Playstation as well the Vive, a device made by HTC. Right now Vive is at the top of the market in terms of price. They're selling their units for $800. And Sony PlayStation is at $400 with a little extra to get the handsets.

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So, essentially, this puts Oculus at the lowest price point among these competitors. The winner in the Virtual Reality space is still uncertain. None of the three companies we're talking about releases data on how many units they sell, not Sony, not Facebook, and not HTC. Now, there are three party researchers who do give estimates of what the sales have been.

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SuperData which is a research firm that talks to gain developers and retailers to come up with estimates for sales has released their estimates for the first quarter of 2017. According to them, Sony Playstation was far and away the leader in this category with HTC Vive a distant second and Oculus coming in third.

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Oculus insists this is not a desperation move. They say that they're cutting the price now because so many games, movies. And other kinds of entertainment have been released in the last few months that this system is finally ready for a mass market at this price point. Where they fall in this horse race will eventually determine whether it was worth the billions of dollars that Facebook paid for Oculus.